Finding Home

Story by Amanda Blake / Photo by Eric Kayne

Romita Mandal had known Mr. Matthie for more than a decade. He’d been her elementary and middle school strings director, and, when she reached high school, her private violin instructor.

“Sometimes, we wouldn’t unpack the violin,” she shares. “Sometimes, I would just have a breakdown on the couch, and he would help me and be a mentor.”

Mandal grew up with a Hindu mom and an atheist dad. She aligned more with her dad, whom she describes as scientifically minded with no space for spirituality—yet, unlike him, Mandal believed that God existed.

Mandal independently studied parts of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, and found it puzzling that churches didn’t worship on the seventh day.

One day, after speaking with Mandal about God, Matthie offered to spend time with her to answer any “God questions” she might have. She accepted, and they eventually began studying the Bible together once a week.

Matthie’s answers made sense to Mandal in a way her church experiences did not. As she explains it, she saw Christianity in a different light because she was learning about it through her longtime friendship with Matthie. A few months into their studies, she started attending Matthie’s church, Potomac Conference’s Living Faith church—now called Greater Than I—in Chantilly, Va.

She loved how the service was structured and how the congregation was involved in reading and discussing Bible passages. After about a year of studying with Matthie, in 2016, Mandal was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. For her, “coming home” truly is the best way to describe her experience of finding her church.

“I love that phrase, because every time I go to church, I tell people, ‘This is my home. You guys are my home,’” she says. “I haven’t always had a stable living situation. There are very few places where I have felt emotionally, physically and mentally safe, but in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I feel like my true self.”

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Before exploring Adventism, Mandal had adopted several tenets of the Adventist health message in her own life. Discovering that her new church family followed those same guidelines was a joy.

Both Mandal and Morgan mention their church’s service opportunities. Mandal says that she loves getting involved in any way she can, especially when she can help organize opportunities for fellowship and connection with the community. Morgan explains that, as a “Martha”—a hard worker who needs a purpose— the church feeds her by keeping her busy. She jokes that her hair was still wet from the baptismal tank when she started teaching a Sabbath School class.

For them, the Adventist Church’s emphasis on the Bible also played a huge role in drawing them toward the denomination. “I love the emphasis on rest and prayer and … not discounting certain parts of the Bible just because it’s convenient or because you can interpret some- thing a certain way,” Mandal says. “I truly feel that Adventism is so faithful to the Word.”

Describing how she feels when she goes to church and learns more about God through Scripture, Mandal adds, “I’m constantly inspired to be a version of myself that God can use.”

Click here for the complete feature from the Nov/Dec 2025 issue.